How can I render an animation where we can see through a mesh similar to 'in front'?
Here is one way you can do this.

First, set the camera type to Orthographic and make sure the X Rotation = 90 so that it is looking straight forward. You can play with the Orthographic Scale to zoom in and out.



Second, add a Geometry Node to your ground shader and connect that to a Separate XYZ node. Take the Y from the node and connect it to the Alpha of your shader.
You can plug the output to the first input of a Math node set to add to move where the cut-off happens by changing the second value.


Hope that helps!